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Comment by stingraycharles | Hacker News Reader

The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country with a huge farming export surplus, with a very large industry (and lobby) behind them. This also isn’t about plantations, but livestock. Cows mostly. So nothing related to fertilisers at all.

A few years ago a judge ruled that the way the government calculated the emissions were incorrect, and now the government is basically forced to act. As these livestock farms account for a huge amount of nitrogen compound emissions, the most pain will be felt here. This was known for many years though, but now the reality is here and shit hit the fan.

In general, I think all this is also a symptom of the general distrust in the government, frustration that has been building up, and there’s quite some overlap in this protesting community and the “covid is a hoax” group. It attracts some very weird people.

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The point is that the world is facing a massive food shortage this year, and anything that reduces food supply will result in more starvation in the third world.

This just just not good timing.

The reduction in farm animals isn't going to happen within a year (there are not even very concrete plans yet), this will likely be a very long process.

These farms will be closed over an 8 year period (hopefully), and farms have been closed over the past years as well. It’s just the protests that are happening now, the actual effects are spread over years and years.

Why are you hopeful about closing farms? I don't understand that.

Because it makes very little sense for a country as small and densely populated to heavily subsidise this industry and have such an export surplus, even more so for livestock. This is not a healthy industry, economy at all.

I think this is an utterly ridiculous situation to be in, and the whole argumentation from the farmer’s side is ridiculous. I understand their concerns, but this process has been going on for years, decades, and at this point they’re just mostly spreading FUD.

Udderly ridiculous.

Because we have too many in the Netherlands, it's that simple. We are a tiny country where nearly every area that isn't used for housing or industry is used for farming. Go to any other European country, you have large forested areas, mountains, etc. That hardly exists in the Netherlands because we're all farm.

The Dutch protests are not about third world countries.

I don't care what the protests are about, I'm saying why it is a terrible idea.

And you're wrong, and ignoring people who are trying to educate you. Ramping down the number of Dutch cattle over 8 years or whatever is not taking affordable food out of the mouths of poor people in the third world.

Wouldn’t reducing the number of cows increase total food supply? I’m not saying that NL should reduce their cow supply, but your logic seems flawed.

Even for dairy production, cows consume a lot more calories than they provide on the other end. If fewer calories are going to feed cows, then more would be available for other uses.

That depends entirely on what the cattle are being fed. If they are grazing pasture that cannot be planted in row crops (e.g. too hilly, too gravelly), or if they are eating the waste products of other food production (e.g. corn stalk silage), then they are eating calories that would never have been available for human consumption.

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